So I Can't Play H [Anime Review]

Some anime have titles that are really inaccurate, Attack on Titan's English title is pretty... miserable actually. Shingeki no Kyojin (進撃の巨人), or Titan's Advance, is so much more accurate. So I Can't Play H (だから僕は、Hができない, Dakara Boku wa, Ecchi ga Dekinai) is yet another series suffering from totally inaccurate titles.

Our Hero, describing how he views women. Out loud. I don't even know where to begin...

Her reaction seems a tad severe...

So in over his head...

I will admit that my Japanese is not the best, but it's not terrible either. The English translation of the title makes absolutely no sense to me. The best translation I can get from Japanese reads more like: Therefore I, cannot do 'H' (Ecchi - I've included a link, but who needs one of those now? The word is in the common internet parlance). I do not have a clue where 'play' comes from in the English title. Heck I thought it was going to involve more Dating Sims in the vein of  The World only God Knows. Nooope. So why the English title? I might be missing something in my translation, but the English just seems weird to me.

3 out of 5 stars (I almost gave it a 3.5)

So, lets just get this out of the way. This series has zilch to do with ecchi games, dating sims, or the like... at all.

No this series is about a boy who meets a girl. Scratch that, it is about Ryosuke Kaga, a perverted highschool student (aren't they always) who can't help but vocalize his thoughts, meeting a beautiful red-haired girl outside his house. She just so happens to be Lisara Restall, a Grim Reaper. Yep...   

This is an up to date show, they have Webcams.

Ryosuke ends up, forcibly, making a contract with Lisara to provide her with energy while she is in the human world. This energy comes from his eternally perverted life-energy. Her mission in the human world: to seek out and find an individual with great power.


It won't be that easy, of course.

I think this speaks for itself.

I'll be blunt. The structural plot premise is not all that interesting. What makes the series moderately good (beyond the boatloads of fan-service) is its treatment of responsibility and how it resolves its romantic plot.
 

Underboob. There is a significant amount of fan-service.

Ryosuke is a pretty mediocre character. He brings some humor with his unrestrained vocalization of the kinds of thoughts that most people would keep inside their head. But that is not really what his character is about, it might be what he is billed as, but he is actually a character that represents the burden of responsibility. When he takes on tasks, he strives to complete them. Of course failure for him is a two edged sword, and it cuts deep.

Told you.

The other main character Lisara, is well rounded too. She represents sacrifice. She often sacrifices her own happiness for things like duty, and for the feelings of other people. She is quite cute, the transitional hair color is pretty nice, and she's tsundere. I hope I don't need to link that term as well...


The biggest problem with the series is most likely its super slow start. It takes a bit over half the episodes to even get the ball really rolling, and the series is only 12 episodes long (and no omake episode). So the series has a slow start, its short, and it has quite a number of characters. Heck one character only really shows up in the last 3 or 4 episodes... Ugh. I will admit that proper pacing has never been anime's strong suit. 

The sad thing is that the series is actually a pretty good romantic comedy.

I will also give a small warning. This series is not too be watched on Crunchy Roll. They ladle on the censorship. This is a fan service series, and they take away the fan service. It was craptacular when Funimation released Sankarea in a censored form, it was kind of a slap to the face. Crunchy roll does this for the streaming version. Buy or rent the Blu-ray, it is censorship free - the way anime should be watched. I really hate censorship of any form, I'd rather be exposed to something objectionable, that I can chose to turn away from, rather than have it forcibly removed from my view. 

The difference between Crunchy Roll and Blu-ray.